Business & international mobility

A seconded employee keeps their French employment contract and stays affiliated to French social security: the employer keeps paying URSSAF contributions and must obtain an A1 certificate, generally for a period of between 6 months and 3 years. An expatriate employee, by contrast, has their contract switch to a local entity or local scheme: the employer’s French social obligations stop, and the employee loses their rights to French state health cover unless they take out voluntary CFE membership. The status chosen therefore directly determines the health cover that needs to be put in place.

No legal obligation remains once the employee has left the French social scheme: unlike secondment, expatriation ends the employer’s URSSAF contributions, and the employee is no longer covered by French state health insurance. In practice, letting an employee leave with no solution in place exposes the company to liability and industrial relations risk, not to mention the risk of a reassessment if the real status of the position (secondment disguised as expatriation, or the reverse) does not match what was declared. We work through this point with your HR team before proposing any policy.

From two expatriate employees, a group policy becomes worthwhile: it pools the risk, simplifies HR management with a single point of contact, and avoids repeating individual procedures for every new departure. Pricing is always by quote, based on the age pyramid, the countries involved and the level of cover wanted, there is no standard scale that applies from one company to the next. Mustapha draws up a quote within 24 hours once you have sent over your age pyramid. For a single employee, an individual or assignment plan is often still more suitable.

Yes, taking over the existing liabilities of a policy is assessed case by case: claims history, conditions currently being covered, how long employees have been on the policy. We put the group policy back out to tender among the the leading insurers we compare, benefit by benefit, to identify what can be carried over without a break in cover and what will need temporary exclusions. The goal is to improve the terms or the price without any employee losing ongoing cover when the company switches insurer.

An assignment plan, distinct from a standard group policy, covers repeated trips to one or several destinations without taking out a full annual policy for every country visited. It is activated on demand, is usually limited to hospitalisation, urgent care and repatriation, and suits sales staff, technicians or consultants who move from one stay of a few days to a few weeks to the next. For genuinely occasional travel, it costs noticeably less than a group policy sized for a permanent presence abroad.